History and Nature, Violence and Beauty: Recording the Sounds of the South

Miami, Florida: Anna Kronenfeld and Sadye Weiss share a joke on the porch in front of the George Washington Hotel on Collins Avenue. 1975
(H. Christoph/ullstein bild
/ Getty)

Jul 22, 2015

From
and

Click on the audio player above to hear this interview.

As a debate rages in the United States over the value of the Confederate Flag and its cultural appropriation, one folklorist has spent decades of his life patching together a auditory quilt of stories, voices and sounds that tell a narrative of the south.

"When I think of the south, I see a quilt—a beautiful patchwork image," says, Bill Ferris, professor of History at the University of North Carolina.

Ferris, who is white, grew up on a farm in rural Mississippi. Early in his life he witnessed segregation between black and white students at school. Ferris always had a hard time accepting the the status quo, but it was those early memories that inspired him to become a folklorist and "honor their memory, their voices, their music, and their history as a part of my own."

Ferris is also the senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South, and the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Over the last few decades, he has been on a mission to record a vast array of sounds that represent the south and tell a slice of its rich and deep history.

"One thing southerners have in common is they love to talk and they love to hear a good tale," Ferris tells John Hockenberry. "It is that narrative of voices that I have tried to follow—to listen to the story, no matter who they are."

Photos: Below you'll find some photos from the Getty Images library that capture the American South through history in its many varied forms. To see photos from Ferris' book, including some of the people he mentioned in this audio interview, check out his book, "The Storied South: Voices of Writers and Artists."

1905: A chain gang from the southern states of the USA . The chain gang comprised a group of prisoners chained together to perform menial or physically challenging work as a form of punishment. Such punishment might include repairing buildings, building roads, or clearing land. This system existed primarily in the southern parts of the United States, and by 1955 had been phased out nationwide, with Georgia the last state to abandon the practice.

Freedom Riders on a Greyhound bus sponsored by the Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE), sit on the ground outside the bus after it was set afire by a group of whites who met the Negro and white group on arrival here, Anniston, Alabama, May 14, 1961.

Elynor Williams, corporate affairs director for Hanes Group, chats with the chapter president for North Carolina and the national chairperson of child watch the Children's Defense fund at a meeting of the African American advocacy and professional group National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), Washington DC, 1970.

Alina Fernandez Revuelta (L), daughter of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and her daughter Alina-Maria Salgado-Fernandez (R) toast the New Year with champagne, after being reunited in the United States after Alina-Maria left Havana early 31 December 1993 for Miami. Alina Fernandez Revuelta defected from Cuba last week.

Phillip Boudreaux fishes for catfish along a bayou June 13, 2010 in Lafourche, Louisiana. Commercial fishing, including areas in Lafourche, has been banned in much of the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil spill. The spill has been called the largest environmental disaster in American history. U.S. government scientists have estimated that the flow rate of oil gushing out of a ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well may be as high 40,000 barrels per day.

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